Pacific Rim: An IMAX 3D Experience

Another marathon of cacophony and cliché, this Warner Bros. release updates Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla with its tale of earth being continuously attacked by giant sea monsters and defended only by giant, human-controlled robots that excel in hand-to-hand combat. Guillermo del Toro directed the haunting Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and highly amusing Hellboy (2004), but here his nicely eccentric characters—Burn Gorman and Charlie Day as crazed scientists, Ron Perlman as an outsize western hustler who calls himself Hannibal Chau—are swallowed up by the deafening monster mash. Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Hunnam hold down the bland East-West romance, calculated to increase the movie's third-world commerciality.
ByJ.R. Jones